Principles of Game Design, Michigan State University

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4.4

1,069 ratings

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282 reviews

About this Course

You have a great idea for a game. Turning that idea into a reality isn't just about knowing the tools. In this course you will practice moving from game concept through design documentation, prototyping and testing. Numerous elements go into the overall process of game design. These range from topics such as idea generation, story, character, and game world development, game mechanics and level design, and user experience design. You will explore the process for designing meaningful experiences for your players. At the end of the course learners will have produced a game's high concept document, one page blueprint, a physical prototype, pitch and supporting design documentation to move from an idea in your head to a fleshed out design, ready for implementation....

Top reviews

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By JR

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Mar 27, 2016

Great course!\n\nThought I wouldn't use the stuff that I learned in the videos at first, but as I started working on my own projects, I realised it was very important knowledge for a game developer.

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By MC

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Apr 03, 2017

This course helps your game go from concept to reality. It pushed me to get a digital prototype made and ready to demo. Great depth of information related to game design and the gaming industry.

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268 Reviews

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By Animesh Singh Basnet

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Mar 18, 2019

It was a great experience to realize that game development was much more than coding, designing and audio mixing.

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By Sildo Nilo Garbin Neto

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Mar 01, 2019

G.R.E.A.T!

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By Kristopher Charles Tobiasson

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Jan 23, 2019

Great framework for game design. Got me focusing on a lot of things that I hadn't considered previously. I originally felt it started kind of slow, but that is how any idea starts. It needs to go through all of the steps necessary to make it a reality and Casey O'Donnell is great at teaching the process. Recommended

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By Dmytro Naida

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Jan 21, 2019

For me, the course was too general, basically an overview saying you can make game ideas out of nothing; however, it's going to be hard to bring them to life. I would enjoy the course much more if it would provide more practical examples of prototyping without code on different engines, provide more details about free-to-play monetisation and game design principles, etc.

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By Yunxiang Li

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Jan 14, 2019

I do not want to be so offensive, but I hold the opinion that this course is useless at all. I will give up my ambition to accomplish the Game Design and Development Specialization after studying half of this course.

First of all, the course itself has a lot of problems. Videos presented by professor, quiz for each small unit and the final assignment for the week, these things have little relevance. Actually I can just complete the quiz without watching videos at all.

Secondly, the assignment workload for each week is not reasonable.For instance, you may write a high concept document in week one and come out with a game prototype in week four, but you cannot complete a game design document in only one week! It is impossible even for native speakers and for most people who study in Coursera we do not just have to learn from Coursera! We may have jobs or we need to seek for a job or we just to study other lessons in campus, we can not just spend one week on this ambiguous course.

Furthermore, the peer review criteria is totally ridiculous! You have only three grades to give others, 1 for accomplish the purpose , 3 for beyond the basic demand and 5 for doing some epic work. The most ridiculous thing is that we should give 1,3,5 points for one demand which is called "Does this assignment is in PDF HTML or TEXT form?" . How to let just uploading files to be "beyond" or "epic"?

To cut the long story short, only people with mature game ideas or only for people who are already act as game designers can fulfill this course successfully but I do not think they need an introductory level course to improve themselves at all.

Overall I had a great fun time further flushing out my ideas and learning how to transform them into working prototypes; however, being siloed to feedback from a few "low-quality" peer reviewers is eroding my experience, it would be better if Coursera/this course could ensure a diversity of peer reviewers. Right now it feels like I'm being trolled vs. receiving actionable feedback to improve.

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By andraž gruden

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Nov 18, 2018

Somewhere between the corse the lectures are mixed up. That means that you first have the questions then in the next part of the week there is a reading and explanation. This was kinda confusing.

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By Görkem Buzcu

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Oct 22, 2018

It is very detailed. a full course on game design.

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By Anirudh Cheruvu

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Oct 21, 2018

Insightful and enthralling! I learned game design in an orderly fashion along with dos and donts. Very useful.